1. Field of the Invention
An object of the invention is a method of servicing a terminal delivering goods or services. In a preferred example, the terminal is a parking meter or a clock meter. However, it may be any type of automatic dispenser of goods or services such as a dispenser of beverages or even a counter connected to an information retrieval service managing a database. The terminals concerned by the invention comprise at least one device for payment by chip card and, in certain cases, a combined device for payment by chip card and direct payment by cash, coins or bank notes, or by magnetic card. Payment by chip card may be done by the counting out of units that are prepaid and recorded in a memory of the card. In this case the card is a chip card with at least a memory. Or else, the payment is done by debiting from a bank account. In this case, the card is a bank-type card which may be a magnetic card or a chip card.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The problems encountered with this type of combined payment device relate to the monitoring of the employees who have to regularly service the terminals, for example in order to make withdrawals therefrom of cash inserted by users. Indeed, in varying degrees, the payments made by the users are made in cash. The terminal therefore normally delivers three types of account statements in three counters. A first type of account in a first counter relates to the quantity of services delivered. A second type of account in a second counter represents payment by card (so-called electronic money) and a third type of account in a third counter, when such a counter is present, indicates the amount in cash that the employee has to collect and, of course, hand over to the authority managing the terminal. The total of the latter two counters should be equal to the total of the first counter. It is suspected that unscrupulous employees might be led to fiddle with the second counter so as to increase its value with a view to keeping the cash corresponding to the difference created. There are devices, known through the documents EP-A-0 391 302 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,471,905, for removing cash stored in a terminal. These devices, however, provide no information on the state of the terminal, notably when there is no money to be taken out. Furthermore, in order to be put to use, they require specific adjustments to be made to the terminal.
It is also feared that other servicing operators might take advantage of the complexity of a system such as this to cheat the authorities responsible for managing large groups of terminals. Indeed, in a big city, it may be assumed that there are several thousand terminals of such a type, even if it be to deliver only one type of item: for example parking tickets. These terminals could go out of order or might require preventive maintenance. A firm unrelated to these managing authorities may therefore be entrusted with these operations. This firm may draw up servicing reports in which they may claim to have carried out costly operations, for example the changing of a printer of parking tickets when no such operation has been carried out.
There is a system and a method, known from the document EP-A-0 413, for checking the collection of money from prepayment terminals. This system comprises electronic means of interfacing with the terminal for the tapping therefrom of information elements contained in this terminal. These electronic means are very costly in their design, notably because they have a screen and even a keyboard. In practice, systems of this type are connected to a specific input of the terminal. For this purpose, this document provides notably for an input by infrared means. The presence, in itself, of a specific input of the system constitutes a weakness of the system with respect to fraudulent individuals for, in any case, it provides another additional way of gaining access to the system, whatever may be the precautions taken to protect this other way of access.